“We could do a cartoon film (in Czechoslovakia) for about $1,000 or $1,200 a minute then, or about 10% of U.S. costs in those days,” Mr. Deitch told New Europe last week in his Prague apartment, nestled in a building on the foothill of the sloping Petrin park. Mr. Deitch documented his life in Czechoslovakia in a book of memoir “For the Love of Prague.”

Advertisement

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount were among the first big clients of Mr. Deitch and his U.S.-based partners William Snyder of Rembrandt Films and Morton Schindel of Weston Wood Studios.

Demand for Mr. Deitch’s services took off in 1961 after he won an Academy Award for Animated Short Film for his cartoon Munro, a story about a little boy accidentally drafted into the U.S. Army.

Zdenka Deitchova, Mr. Deitch’s Czech wife who he says was responsible for his move to Prague, worked as a producer on all Little Mole films and in 1960 also helped produce Mr. Deitch’s Oscar-winning film.

In the 1960s, Czechoslovak Filmexport, a state-run monopoly exporting films and movie-making skills from the Soviet bloc country, was the main business partner for producers like Mr. Deitch. By the 1970s west European film producers followed in the footsteps of Messrs. Deitch, Snyder and Schindel to produce entire live action television series in Czechoslovakia. Some of them featured Czechoslovak movie stars, like Dagmar Havlova-Veskrnova, the wife of playwright-turned-president Vaclav Havel.

As Czechoslovak Filmexport continued to make deals for outsourced film production with Mr. Deitch, it also struck a deal with Westdeutscher Rundfunk, or WDR, a west-German television broadcaster based in Cologne, for the production of dozens of Little Mole five-minute films.

The WDR deal on Little Mole films proved so lucrative that it lasted until 2002, surviving the collapse of the communist Czechoslovak regime 1989 and Czechoslovak Filmexport in 1991.

“In the 1960s and 1970s foreign production contracts like those with Mr. Deitch generated between $80,000 and $100,000 a year,” said Jitka Markvartova, a long-time sales director at Czechoslovak Filmexport.

In today’s dollars the sum equaled nearly $700,000, according to calculations by Vladimir Kudlik at the Czech central bank.

MGM had Mr. Deitch shoot thirteen Tom & Jerry episodes in Prague and Paramount ordered more than twenty Popeyes. But MGM was afraid to reveal the provenance of its Czechoslovak Tom & Jerries and masked it by Americanizing the names of the Czechs working on them, Mr. Deitch said.

Zdenka Deitchova, whose maiden surname was Najmanova—itself the Czech version of the German name Neumann—was renamed for credits as Z. Newman. Czech film music composer Vaclav Lidl was credited as Victor Little.

Paramount managers appreciated what Prague’s Bratri v Triku and their U.S. expatriate cartoon director could do for them, and so cheaply. Their orders swelled, forcing Mr. Deitch to open another animation operation in the then-Communist Yugoslavia to keep up.

“We got so busy with Popeye, so I also had to make the cartoons in Zagreb,” Mr. Deitch said.

About 22 Popeye films were shot in Prague and 22 more in today’s Croatia by Zagreb Film, he said.

Mr. Deitch said that in the 1960s one Popeye episode cost about $20,000, compared with about $40,000 in the U.S.

Mr. Deitch, now 86 years old, and his 82-year-old wife Zdenka continue working on new cartoon productions for foreign clients. Last year, the couple worked on a cartoon musical series for children for a Japanese producer.

“We may be living icons of animation in Prague, but what people don’t get is that we still need work just so that we can do something,” Mr. Deitch said with his wife nodding approvingly.

——-

Mr. Deitch, his wife and scores of other Czech animators are all in some way linked to the Krtek’s real space shuttle flight. Same applies to astronauts with Czech roots John Blaha, Jim Lovell, Eugene Cernan and Vladimir Remek mentioned by NASA specialist Andrew Feustel in his message to the Czech people. Mr. Feustel is taking Krtek’s hand-puppet replica with him into space in April.

About Emerging Europe

Emerging Europe Real Time provides sharp analysis and insight into what’s making news in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on the expertise of our reporters in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Turkey, the site provides an inside track on economics, politics and business in this emerging part of the European continent.